Reading this just cringes my heart. I’m glad they managed to see through it in the end.

To be honest, years ago when XSEED announced they would release Kiseki FC(1st part), the 1st thing that came to my mind is: They are tackling THAT?! Do they really know what they’re going into?

This game is by far the most wordy games I’ve ever played in my entire life even though it is not a visual novel. I even suspect it has more words than a lot of visual novels. But the wordy combination made this game very unique (although the RPG is very old school) and really great story telling.

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Now, let’s talk about the Chinese localization of Kiseki instead. It’s also another sad story.
Chinese localization or I should say Chinese fan translations of games/anime/novels are always considered fast. This still take 1 half year to come out.

Everyone thinks the Chinese localization of FC is official. Unfortunately, it is the hard work of the Chinese translation group. The translation initiator sold(?) the script to YTL(the company that release the official localization). Not really sold as in one go, but he got wages from the company. The fan translation group only got a free copy of the official game. For the testers, some claimed not have gotten it, reasons given is lost in postal, not sure if they got or not in the end. Ok, that’s not the point, the fan translation never expected wages and they knew the script is given to the company. The problem is the team felt used. Very used. Their names are not even mentioned anywhere, packaging or credits. An incident that shows YTL deliberately do this: they asked the fan translation group forum mod to delete the statement that Falcomchina(the translation group) translate the game with no returns. After the localization of FC, Falcomchina had a fallout with YTL and broken all ties with that company. As players said, FC has one of the best translations ever released, compared to that, SC, the 3rd translations are not that good.

Actually, this is not the only time this company did this kind of stuff, there are a lot of shady things this company did in the name of ‘official’ but this is only one event. There is one time they directly stole the fan translated game maker software RMXP and rebranded as official just like that. And using their profit they DDOS these fan translation sites just to name a few.

My thoughts:
1) Official translations are always short staffed or even a one man show with tight schedule. Unfortunately, companies are profit driven.
2) Problems with using fan translations for official releases. Eg. Ys: The Oath in Felghana(Not a lot of ppl involved in the fan translation also can cause this kind of problem already) Unfortunately, fan translations are in the gray area, things are more complicated if a lot of people are involved. I once saw the credits of a Chinese fan translation of a visual novel with more than 40+ people involved. And they released the game in only half a year. I cannot even imagine how they are able to manage so many people. (Ok, I’m trailing off from the main subject)

I’m feeling very pressured because my class starts tomorrow and I have my reasons for it. I need some distraction while I wait for the inevitable tomorrow so I decide to write something. Also, please check back the last post always especially if you’ve encounter bugs as I might have a new patch for MSN2 that fix it.

I’ve known this a few months ago but now I can’t find the post anymore. It’s a pity because I saw a very pretty CG. I think they announced two games in the post that I can’t find now. Last time I saw was called MSN alpha. I think it’s supposed to be the next big game and not this prequel. The MSN alpha is about the very starting of all MSN world, which is the prequel of all prequels? It’ll probably be an RPG but it’s still not fixed yet. But this MSN3 prequel will be out soon at 5th Oct. Free game like usual. Like previous MSN2 prequel(Origin), it is a special type of RPG. I love their RPG, Origin was so fun to play and quite interesting compared to traditional RPG because they always incorporate some kind of strategy into their RPG. Actually, the author like RPG more than Sim Raising game. This Starry Sky MSN3 prequel is about some small characters in MSN3 and don’t have much to do with MSN3. Like looking through the world through the small characters. The prequel is suppose to round up the leftover world concept of MSN3.

Btw, alfagame is not a company. If I’m not wrong, they started out as a club in their university like almost 10 years ago? They all have their own jobs now(some work in the game industry, I’ve gone to ask them last time) or some new members are still students and they have never sell any games before. There’s a big lengthy post in the forum about why they did not sell their games and the criticism they get from friends and family for doing games free. They got sell some merchandise like the MSN3 Music CD and the commemorative booklet because a survey indicated players wanted it and include a lot of merchandise in the package which is like a nice collection rather than for profit. They also do contests every now and then to win some small prizes which is very nice(I won a MSN3 postcard last time and the person who won the Leviria singing contest got her singing put in the music cd). Not sure in the future they’ll sell any games or not but currently they have not planned to.